Write Your Book in 7 Days with AI: Interview with Darby Rollins KDS: 076

How many times have you thought you’re ready. You want to write your book?

Maybe it’s been on your list of “things to do when”… mainly because it feels like such a daunting task or you think you need to go hole up in a cabin in the mountains for a month with zero distractions (as lovely as that might sound, it’s probably not too realistic).

That’s where Writing with Jarvis comes in.

First, let me tell you that I’m participating in this current challenge (beginning July 12th, 2021. Don’t worry if you miss this, you can sign up for the next challenge. They’re doing them regularly).

I had looked at this a few months ago but life was a little crazy with moving from Boise to California for a couple of months, and then to Costa Rica at the beginning of June.

I’m one of those people that makes way more progress when I’m held accountable. It just works. So I knew that in order for me to make writing my first book a priority I’d want to participate in the Writing with Jarvis Book Challenge. I also have a friend who went through the challenge and successfully wrote his book.

So there’s that 😉.

I asked Darby Rollins, one of the creators of the Writing with Jarvis – 7 Day Book Challenge, to join me on the podcast to talk about the challenge, the process, and some of their success stories.

I’ll be sharing an update this week (with my pre-work), and then will share some of the progress next week and of course, the final results of the challenge when it’s completed.

I’ve decided to try something a little different with the post episode format and share the full transcripts below. Let me know what you think!

Enjoy!

Kim Doyal 0:01
Welcome to the Kim Doyal show where I believe business should be fun. Creating marketing and mastering your craft is as much about the day-to-day as it is about the big wins, and even the epic fails. In this podcast, we’re going to talk about all things content marketing, digital marketing, a little bit of mindset, and how to just show up by creating an online business and income that fits your lifestyle. Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome to another episode of the Kim Doyal show. I, of course, am your host Kim Doyal. And I’m super excited to have my guest on mainly because his book writing challenge is pretty magical. My guest today is Darby Rollins, Darby and I connected through the conversion AI group. I followed what he was doing. Now, for those of you who also aren’t familiar with Jarvis, that is the robot, the bot for conversion AI, we’re gonna go into that a little bit more. But, Darby, thank you so much for being here today.

Darby Rollins 0:58
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me.

Kim Doyal 1:01
Okay, so we’re gonna jump right into the book challenge. But before we do that, I always love hearing a little bit of the backstory. So if you wouldn’t mind, just give the listeners a little bit of who you are, how you got here, and what you do.

Darby Rollins 1:14
Yeah, of course. So my story in the entrepreneurship world kind of started back in 2017, or I dove into real estate and trying to figure out what I wanted to do to build a business that I could, you know, create a life that I enjoyed around. And that led me to a lot of different directions, over the course of the next year ended up landing outside of real estate in e-commerce and specifically Amazon. So I started an Amazon private label brand, and got that up and launched and had some success with it. But you know, learned a lot of had a lot of pretty big failures from it as a result of it just being my first, you know, big venture me going all-in on something. And it opened up the opportunity, the doorway for me to really dive into copywriting and make a pivot from just being an Amazon seller to helping other people sell more products on Amazon as well, from just the stuff that I learned from going through that process on my own. So over the last few years, I’ve built optimized written listings for over 1300 different Amazon listings, me and a small team of mine. And so we’re doing a lot of copywriting, and especially over the last year with everything that was going on in the world, trying to figure out how can I leverage my skills, grow my team and really, you know, make the right next steps going into 2021. And that’s where I, you know, connected, you know, again, with Austin and David conversion AI, you know, they, you know, back in December 2020, you know, they were just getting their hands, hands dirty with playing around with creating Jarvis, and, you know, I, you know, close with the team over the last few years. And I saw a lot of really awesome applications immediately towards helping me build high-quality e-commerce listings much faster, and at a lot larger scale using this tool. So I started working with them in January of this year. And at the end of January, I decided to challenge myself using this tool, Jarvis, Hey, why don’t I write a book about my knowledge and experience with Amazon, copywriting, Amazon listing building things of that nature. And I challenged myself to do it in a weekend, you know, we’re all busy doing our stuff. And so I wanted to just get my head down and see if I could use this AI to help me write a book, I’d always put it off writer’s block is still something I struggle with. But thankfully, now we have Jarvis and, and the community around it, that is really helping break through that writer’s block and create this really high-quality content, right, that is never been seen before. So that’s kind of what led me to into books, I guess. And so after I wrote that first book, I shared with the community how I did it in a weekend using the AI and the structure of the outline and everything. And that so in February, we kicked off the first seven-day book challenge. And from that, I think 12 or 13, maybe more books actually got published from members of the community. Some had never been published or never written a book before it was the first book. Some It was a lifelong dream, some wanted it as a lead magnet for their business. So I’ve just wanted something to get out. They had an idea for a long time, they just took the challenge to get it done in a week. And so that’s kind of where things are taking me now. I still have a few Amazon copywriting clients that I work with, but putting a lot of focus on working with a team that you know, building Jarvis inputs there, and then delivering really, really high-quality actionable training to the members in Jarvis underground, our community of you know, People learning how to use AI to write books. And that’s, that’s where we’ll be, are we kicking off the next challenge, which is on July 12. And you’ll be joining us, Kim. So I’m super excited to have you there.

Kim Doyal 5:11
Thank you. Me too. And I’ve been I’ve started going through the materials now that my move is settled whatnot. And it’s, you know, just the structure of the challenge is amazing. We’ll get into that. But before we dig a little bit more into Jarvis. So for the listeners, this is our round two of kicking this podcast off, and I had to, I called out to Darby because he is a self-proclaimed talker printer, which I just think is a fun fact that everybody needs to know. You’re also a game designer though, too. And I totally want to focus on Jarvis, can you tell us a little bit though about play side hustle, cuz you’re certainly not resting on your laurels with anything you’re doing here?

Darby Rollins 5:50
Yeah, so Play Side Hustle was an idea that I think every one of us has had at some point, at least entrepreneurs. We’re always coming up with new ideas. And almost exactly two years ago today, it was on July 5 was kind of the inception of when we decided to take this idea forward. But side hustle is the party game for entrepreneurs. It’s kind of like apples to apples we’d Shark Tank. Essentially, players play people pair up as teams or as players to pitch fake business ideas to investors, and when based on their pitches being funny, or fundable. So there’s a lot of different use cases and applications for how the game can get played family night, you know, game night with friends, you know, co-working kind of team-building exercises. But yeah, we launched it on Kickstarter in a 90-day window and got funded in the first 12 hours, you know, raised about 10 grand in that campaign to fund our first batch of inventory coming through which we use that Kickstarter launch in 2019, to spend the majority of 2020 really refining the production process and getting that first edition of the game out, fulfilled all those orders at the end of 2020. And, and now we’re actually on the verge of version two of the game, which is going to be a redesigned reimagined edition of what people are already really enjoying and loving right now. But just in a more compact. Yeah, calm, more compact game, it’s you know, less of a carbon footprint, you know, we’re not using as much paper, it weighs less, it’s easier to travel with. And you know, at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is kind of bring that creative spirit of entrepreneurship to everybody like the same way you would when you’re watching Shark Tank on TV, or this is like Shark Tank in your living room. So that side hustle, we do a weekly game show at two o’clock every Tuesday, Central Time, where we bring guests to live, we play side hustle, we interview the guests about what they’re up to in their business in the world. And we’re looking to kind of keep expanding that on now that things are opening up more put more like local events where people can come meet up connect with other entrepreneurs. What we’re calling productive play where you know, you’re actually energizing and you’re like getting better as a result of playing this game versus just a mindless list. There are some cuss words at some dirty words and combine them and you know, have a few laughs Will you actually walk out of side hustle, feeling better, feeling more energized, and maybe with an idea that you can actually take action on or inspires you to do something else that your business?

Kim Doyal 8:36
Well, I’m kind of pumped because it’s on Amazon and Amazon does ship to Costa Rica. So I know. It’s, it’s probably gonna cost me twice as much as the game cost me to get it here. But hey, it’s a write-off, right? So that’s all good, but Okay, so I’m gonna pivot a little bit I just think it’s really cool that you’re doing that and I can’t wait to hear about version two and support you with that. So let’s kind of dig in a little bit deeper to this book challenge but one of the questions I want to ask you so you’re a copywriter you’ve been doing this for a while there seems to be and I don’t mean to get controversial by any means. But you know, it seems kind of that people have this either love or hate feeling about AI and you know, is it gonna replace copywriters or it’s crap it doesn’t do this. So that what were your initial thoughts about AI writing as a copywriter before you really dug into Jarvis?

Darby Rollins 9:33
My initial thoughts, I thought it was awesome, because, like the hardest, the hardest thing that I have that I struggle with as a copywriter and just a writer in general, is it hitting that writer’s block wall, staring at a blank, blank page and like knowing what I want to say, but not being able to get that first? Like 20% of the way started 50% of the way there like how do I like get it to the point where I can then make edits and make revisions on it because it’s not like everything I put out is perfect on the first try. And the same thing with AI. And so I’m a fan of it because it helps me see things from different angles and different perspectives that I might not have thought about before. And it gets those creative juices flowing, that I can then take and mold and expand upon and really create that final product. I think the copywriters that are relying solely on Hey, I write this amount of words for you, this is x, this is what you get, you pay me x, like, if that’s all you’re leaning on is that, you know, you can write a blog post, you know, 1000 word blog post and charge x for it, like, you’re gonna be pretty limited. Anyways, of what you’re doing versus how I typically work with clients is like, it’s, the results are based off the sales that come from the copy, right? Like, it’s at the end of the day, it’s all about making sales with what you’re writing are like driving action that’s meaningful. And the Jarvis and you know, conversion AI, I mean, they just simply put, it gets you to that, it gets you maybe even 80% of the way there where it can do all the heavy lifting and giving you different ideas, and then allow you to come in as the human, you know, editor and know how to take it to that final bit and put the final touches on it. Because I mean, without an editor looking at anyone’s copy, like you’re always going to be this, I think this is going to give people a chance to really up-level their skill set, and apply it and do a lot of really cool things rather than just kind of sitting back and having a mystical prestige that you’re a copywriter, when, like it’s all it’s really about the strategy at the end of the day, like, you know, copies copy, but it’s like, how are you directing? You know, the copy is really where the results come from?

Kim Doyal 11:51
Well, and I’ll tell you, you know, it’s so I’m also I’m a little bit of a nut when it comes to newsletters. I love this whole second coming of newsletters that’s happening right now. And so I did this little mastermind, and I have a friend who is just terrified of writing, she’s like, I don’t have I’m not a good writer and all of that. And the truth is, I always joke with people. I’m like, if you can do one thing in your online business, it’s to write as much as you can get good at it understand how it works. It just takes practice and time, right, however, so she’s using conversion AI and she’s kicked off a newsletter and has been consistent and is now having fun writing because of Jarvis. And so I think people and that’s a really general term, right. But I think there are people who just don’t think it’s, you know, it’s quality, or it’s putting stuff out there. But, you know, here’s an example. So with our content creators planner, my business partner, Jody Hirsch, and I, we spent probably six hours diving into a Story Brand by Donald Miller, before we did any copy, we want to make really sure we were clear who this is for what we’re doing all that kind of stuff. I can take a copy, or you know, just taglines, whatever, I can take that and put it into Jarvis and like the ADA framework gets spit out blew me away. But my input was really good. You know, and then I have a newsletter and stuff that I’m not I’m so aware that I’m not super clear on the messaging. And so what it’s spitting out, isn’t really hitting the mark for me. So I’m like, okay, Kim, you have to put, you have to do a little bit better with what you’re putting in, in order to get better coming out at the same time. Still, what it spits out, I’m like, I can use that sentence. Or I can take that and put that into this template. So you know, what are your thoughts in terms of what people are using, when they jump into conversion AI and start using Jarvis, in terms of what it puts out,

Darby Rollins 13:38
I think you hit the nail on the head, can like the input is so critical with all of this because you know, at the end of the day, it’s a robot, it’s a machine like it only has so many data points to pull from. And its outputs are directly related 99% of the time to what you’re inputting. Because it’s a machine, it’s not perfect. Sometimes it does kind of go off a little tangent here and there. And it’s getting better, right? It’s it wasn’t even a thing six months ago. But, you know, just like anyone writing any copy, right, like if you’re going to dive deep into story brand and spend the time and the hours to understand your avatar like that’s the hard work that most people skip over anyways. And it’s why people’s copy just resonates more because they just understand what they’re offering to their customers because they understand where their customers are. And the copy speaks to them, you know, in a way that resonates as opposed to just clicking. Hey, Jarvis, give me five AI days. And I hope that one of these converts, right, there’s a lot of work that goes before it. Right. And that’s kind of one thing with inside the challenges, I’m sure you’ve noticed is we don’t even really talk about Jarvis until the preparation and like the pre-work and the research is done. Because, you know, once you get that out of the way, then you can really focus on the writing and getting the bulk of that content out.

Kim Doyal 15:00
Exactly it’s a planning and the prep which. So I will tell you a friend of mine, Jan Koch, he went through your, your Jarvis, and he’s like, Kim, have you seen this, which is what got me into Conversion.ai at the beginning. He’s like, let me show you how I wrote his Virtual Summit Mastery book. And nailed it. I was like, Oh, my God, he showed me his outline. So, couple things with, I want to ask you about that. Let’s dig into the challenge now. So I’m going through the material. And for everybody listening, there is a membership, they’ve got complete training in there, you can dive in even before the challenge begins, which is fantastic. And creating your outline. Are there anything I don’t want to say is, are there any commonalities You see, with people coming to the challenge and a fear of writing a book is they’re like, Oh, my God, I can’t write a book. This is too big. Or do you see any commonalities with people coming to write their books?

Darby Rollins 15:54
From just like hesitation, like, what’s been stopping people before?

Kim Doyal 15:58
Yeah, let’s hit the mindset piece. I think that’s the biggest piece.

Darby Rollins 16:03
Absolutely. You know, writing a book is a daunting task, like just the thought of writing, like, again, like, the context of a book can range drastically, right? Like, you can talk about writing Pride and Prejudice, like, you know, you know, 50,60 100,000 word book or you can write a children’s book that’s, you know, a lot smaller and is designed completely differently, right. And so, there’s definitely a spectrum of the type of books that we are talking to people about writing, but one of the commonalities is, most of the books right now that are coming through and that are seeing success at the speed that we’re seeing the success are nonfiction. And it’s, and they’re being written by people that are already experts and thought leaders on a specific topic. But the one thing that has been common now that I’m seeing that’s been consistently stopping people from even getting that book started, is like one, it’s like, this is gonna take forever, right? This book is going to take years to write, it’s just a massive, daunting task. And I’ve already got 500 things going on, I already spinning a bunch of plates, like I don’t want to add another plate to my mix. Right. And the second aspect of it is, once I start to get down to write my book, like, what is the roadmap of the book look like it, if you don’t understand what your outline is, it’s really, really difficult to have a clear beginning to end. In the, in the, in the book writing process, right, just from story brand to hero’s journey to combining that with what we call the problem-solving template, which is proven time and time again, outline framework for how like best-selling nonfiction books sell. And that’s where we really see a big light bulb go off is like, Oh, I put off writing my book because I haven’t done an outline. And it’s been five years because I’m stuck on what the outline looks like. And then they go through Craig Henley’s training on his rapid outlining process. And one of our earlier students, Michael, he got his whole outline done for his book and an hour and he literally procrastinated for years and years and years. And that’s, that’s probably the biggest one is like, once we can get people through that, how do you build an outline? And like, what are you going to talk about? then it’s just a matter of like, splitting it down to like, Okay, cool. Now, how much work? How many words do you need in this chapter to get this point across? 1000? Cool, write 1000 words. Use Jarvis. Alright, done. All right, next, right. And because it’s very A to Z, like I’m solving this problem for somebody and I can show you exactly how, with a nonfiction style that we that that tends to come through this challenge with the entrepreneurs that we work with. That’s the research and the outline. And the preparation is our number one, focus right out the gate. So that it’s basically like, you know, go go to town with Jarvis now, like your outlines done, get your head down, and just write write, write, write, write, get it out, and then start to refine what we use as the minimum viable book. As like the concept around this where it doesn’t have to be perfect. But let’s get you something that you can get into the hands of your first readers so that you can, like get real, legitimate feedback on what is what kind of edits Do you need to make? What kind of revisions you have? What didn’t make sense? What didn’t make sense, right? The biggest problem in the book publishing industry is that 90% of the people that even tried to start a book, they never get it to the point where they give it to an editor or they just sit on the idea. And then it’s years of their book, just collecting dust on the shelf. And that’s not what we’re about in challenge. We’re saying, hey, pick a book. Make it your focus. Like get your stuff, get, get everything laid out. And let’s do a seven-day Blitz. Like, let’s really make some progress on your book. You’ll be surprised by how much ground you can cover using jargon. And just not putting it off till tomorrow again.

Kim Doyal 20:05
Well, and I, huge and I think the other piece of that because you know that so the book I’m gonna write and I’ll get into it, we get there but is, it’s kind of so I have a newsletter on my site, it’s called, it’s hashtag f the hustle and I came up with the term years ago, it this is not about the hustle newsletter, I just am one of those people, like, I work hard. I live with intention, I’m like, but I don’t believe in not living, right, while you’re building a business. But it’s, it’s interesting because as I do that, and I’m like, Okay, so that’s gonna be the book, it goes along with my newsletter goes along with the movement. And I’m kind of like, where do I start, which is absolutely like, 100%, that’s gonna be the book. And, and I was sitting there thinking about, I know what I want to talk about, but literally, so this roadmap of the outline piece, like, I’m good to go with the writing. Now, the other side of this is when you’re talking about, you know, getting the minimum viable book out there. And the editing piece, I have a tendency when I create content to kind of edit as I go because I format it right in WordPress, I’m not, but you’re saying, Get it out, and then go back and edit.

Darby Rollins 21:11
Well, so I’ve learned a lot about this whole book publishing process over the last six months, because I’ve like, been living it on purpose and trying to like, every single month, every single time we’re doing this challenge, I’m actively participating as well. And one of the things that cost me a lot of extra time, when I did my first book was, I got all the words out first, because I was just like, holy crap, Jarvis can do this. And like, I use Jarvis to kind of give me all the different topics and touchpoints that I already knew that I wanted to talk about, I was just having trouble organizing them. And then I went back afterward and kind of like fit them into an outline, and then trim stuff up. So I went, like, let’s get all the words out first, and then let’s figure out what order they want to put them in. And, you know, that just, it just took a lot more time on the post-editing. And so like that, where we’re, but we found now is that you start with that outline. And really like, don’t try and skip over the outline first, like take the extra time on making sure that you really have a clear idea of all the chapter titles, the sub, you know, in the different topics, you’re going to be touching on inside of there beforehand. So that, you know, you can really just like, you know, turn the turn it up whenever it comes to, to actually writing, you know, getting the words onto the paper, I guess. But a lot of the people that we work with now, have a lot of the content already out there in some form. It might be like podcast interviews that might be they’ve already created a course. They have like a webinar, you know, they’ve had a speech that they’ve put on stage. And this book is like the ethos of that. And so really just organizing the content at that point. And then just being really clear about where it goes. And so I mean, have you watched it? I’m curious how far you’ve gotten into the challenge right now. And kind of like, Where’s the biggest question mark for where you need to go next?

Kim Doyal 23:12
I’ve just begun it. So I’m not super far into it yet. And it was the what was the interview you guys, there was another interview with the outlining piece of it. And I apologize, I don’t remember his name. So I was going through that. It but this is the funny piece is this is where I was talking about what I was even inputting into Jarvis. So it’s like, in my head, I have this, like, I know what I’m doing with this, the newsletter I’m at, you know, I don’t know, 32 issues, I’ve been doing it for 32 weeks, it’s part of me. But at the same time, I’m not clear on who it was for the problem. So I’ve been digging into Story Brand at the same time prior to getting into this. So I was just wondering, you know, in terms of the outline piece, you know, where do you see, is there a piece of the challenge that you see people getting stuck, or they’re just not completing each of the elements?

Darby Rollins 24:03
Well, it’s not necessarily the challenge. It’s that there’s a lot to learn about this process, if you want to come in, like right out the gate and be like, oh, like, obviously, this is why people get like, dis never start with this process because there’s a lot to learn. And it’s hard to take action on stuff while you’re consuming content. And so that was one of the things that slowed some people down initially, as we were bringing in these, like World Class coaches. You know, we’re building this challenge every single month. And, you know, after the last challenge, we realized that we really need people to spend at least a week beforehand, doing the pre-work and doing the homework and going through the content, so that you’re not bogged down by trying to watch three hours of video and then right on day one, when you’re focused on day one should be like, already hot, you should already have a pretty clear picture right on day one. And so that’s why right now we start people with We have you know, introductory overview welcome video that just kind of outlines the challenge. And then we’ve got you know, really starting with Chuck Hogan is is one of the speakers who recently brought in but he’s used to doing some coaching with like Tony Robbins that are really high level. And his entire, you know, the interview is really reflecting on like your why and like really being like centered with like, what you’re doing this challenge for. And doing again, like the mental prep work to do this because it is an intense week that you’re putting yourself through because you need to stay focused while you’re going out through this process. But like that, and Matthew Thrushes another big one that

Kim Doyal 25:41
That was the one that I watched was Matthew Thrush.

Darby Rollins 25:43
Yeah. So I mean, he’s just, you know, it is world-class at what he does, you know, like, over at this point, he’s done helping publish and launch and write over two 300 best selling books. And, you know, that is such a good, like, way to start laying the groundwork for a challenge like this. But, you know, instead of, it’s easy to get caught up in the research as well, right. And so that’s why we want to, that’s why the contact that the timeframe is seven days, and like, Okay, give yourself a week to prep, but like give it seven days, you can accomplish a lot if you focus on one thing for seven days, right and dedicate the time and like, really know what you want your outcome to be. And, again, because we’re all busy people, like most of us have a business or two that were involved in. And it’s easy to get distracted after the fact. But you know, again, like, it all comes down to the outline, it comes down to knowing your who like who you’re writing to why you’re doing this in the first place, know your outline, and, you know, can you literally walk the person that you’re speaking to, if you could speak to just one person and have this book impact one person’s life if you could pinpoint them and visualize them, and then walk them from introduction to chapter one all the way to the last chapter in the conclusion, then, like, Don’t overcomplicate it from that, like, it doesn’t have to be a 50,000-word book, a lot of the books that come out of this are 15 20,000 words, really straight to the point books on a very specific topic. But like they’re meant to get them to solve a problem, you know, and then you story integrated with the outline and with the, with each chapter to illustrate how they either learned, like how to solve this problem, or who they learned this concept from and applying it. But if your reader walks away from reading your book with anything at the end of each chapter, they should have, they should feel like they got something out of their book that they can go and apply and use for themselves for one because you want to help them get to the next chapter of the book, but also like a lot of people never even finished books, right? Like they might, they might read the introduction, and maybe a chapter or two. And so what we like, like part of the way that we teach people how to position these books is like the introduction is really one of like, the more important parts of it because like one you’re like, pre-selling someone as to why they should continue to read this book, but also telling, like sharing them why this book is different. You know, how to Who are you in the first place? Like why should they listen to you? What are your credentials? Maybe the history of this problem? What is the future look like? And you know, that introduction is really the sales page for the rest of your book. But you want to give people the invitation to reach out to you if they want to do more work with you, or they want more additional resources, which is something that we do in our book published with Jarvis. And the people that do finish this book and see results from it is because people find them through their book, or they see their book, and they buy their book. And they say, Oh my gosh, this person can solve my problem. And I need to solve it now. I’m sure I could read the book. But I’d rather just hire you to do this for you know what I mean?

Kim Doyal 29:02
Well, you know, in hearing that, this is one of the things that really struck me was that that structure of that introduction, and it’s essentially selling people on who you are, what you do, and why you solve their problem. You’re also giving people this super, I don’t know, it’s a guide to the business, to be honest. It’s sort of a guide to marketing if you can understand that. That’s where all your marketing should be stemming from. And you know, you there are a lot of people that are Oh, I do this, and this is what I do. And it’s like, well, it’s not about you. It’s about your customer and your audience and who you’re serving. So there’s sort of this bonus to going through this process because it’s going to help you get the clarity piece on how you market overall is that safe to say

Darby Rollins 29:48
100% I mean it it’s forcing everyone that’s going through this process, right and just writing a book, in general, you have to think these types of things through and if you don’t understand your customer journey And you’re gonna have a really hard time articulating. Like, like how to help somebody alongside that journey, right. And so it’s, it’s, you know, with some of the feedback that we’ve gotten, it’s like it’s taking, you know, people might be successful on their consultancies for years. And they’re realizing that, like, it’s time to re, rehab, like, may revitalize some of their thoughts and ideas. And, and putting that book format, they say, like, wow, like, I’m, like, re falling in love with my customer avatar, or, you know, it’s like you, you have to envision that person and really understand the problems that they’re going through. And you should, you should be able to get to those, you know, those different talking points, through your own experience, or what you’ve learned as the expert that’s helping them but you know, at the end of the day, you’re the guide, like, like the story brand framework goes like you’re the guide that they’re coming across, that’s giving them that path, net, step by step on that hero’s journey so that they can achieve what they want to achieve. And so stepping out of your own way, it’s not this isn’t a rah book, look how cool I am, like people are selfish, like they want what can help them right now. And so that’s exactly what your book should do. It shouldn’t be full of fluff, if it’s a non-fiction, problem-solving type of book, like how to, it should be focused on how can I help this person achieve this result as quickly as possible? And give them the opportunity to reach out and connect and chat more if they’d like to, you know, further discussion beyond the book.

Kim Doyal 31:28
That’s gold. I have to tell you the Story Brand, when that connected with me that I’m like, oh, I’m the guide, you know, and I’m a Harry Potter, nut. So I’m I was like, I’m Dumbledore. They need to see themselves as Harry, and I need to take them on this journey. I would love to hear you guys have worked with so many people. Now, I was mentioning my friend Yellen, who did his virtual mastery summit book. And so do you have any stories or case studies you can share about people who have successfully published their books? And some of the results? I mean, I don’t know if you’ve, you know, to speak for other people. But you guys have had a lot of people go through this already.

Darby Rollins 32:02
Yeah, so I know that people are seeing results that they’re not necessarily like sharing directly with me just because like, I’m just watching what they’re doing. They’re getting engagement on social media. I don’t know what it turns into necessarily, on every occasion. But you know, recently, Sierra, one of the women who came through an earlier challenge, she reached out and said that her sales team just close, like, she was bringing her new sales guy, and he just closed this first high ticket sale, because somebody reached out to, like, connect to her, because he saw her book on one of her Facebook Lives. And so we got the book, he was like, Oh, I want to reach out and connect with someone on the call gets on a call with their sales team. I think it was like a six or $7,000 sale. But I mean that she wrote that book, actually, in like two days, she scrapped her entire book, she was overcomplicating it during the challenge. And then it was like 48 hours left, and she was just, like, just cut out all the noise. All the nonsense is like her book was called not a sales book. And she’s just like, this is what it’s gonna be about. I knocked it out. And, you know, two days and like, now it’s like her process for a cat what she does in her business. And it’s, you know, generating like monetary results there. Austin, from Jarvis conversion, Ai, he wrote a book called subscription secrets. And he was telling me about a lady that found his book on Amazon because she was searching for someone that could help her help her nonprofit business, implement subscription, and to the business model. And that’s what Austin’s really good at doing is helping brands do that. And so, reached out to him through the book, totally cold chat, like just researching on Google and found his book booked a call with him, you know, and now like, there are, you know, I’m sure a subscriber to proof and conversion, AI and all of that. So I mean, those are two that come off the top my head that, you know, like, pretty quickly, after they got their books published, they saw those results, which is why I say it, like, you know, if you do any marketing on your book after it’s done, like that’s where the results are going to come from is like, how do you keep the messaging going forward? And how do you actually use the book, in your marketing on the day-to-day of your business, or as a reference tool, because you put in all the hard work right now? Now, it’s like, Okay, cool. Do I want to talk about this week? Or do I want to talk about like, all these different thoughts and ideas and, you know, things that are inside of your book, like, you can just take that content and repurpose it for stuff, you can use it just as a talking point for an interview, you can send a book to a potential client or prospect and just say, like, hey, like, I wrote this book, I thought you might enjoy it. Like, there are so many different ways that you can leverage the book once it’s done. You know, it’s really up to like, taking it back today one of the challenge where we say like, what are your goals with this book? Like, what do you want it to do in the next three to five years for you and your business? What are you You want to do in the first week after you launch it? How many do you want to sell? Like, how do you build a content marketing strategy that doesn’t have your book launch and then die and fizzle out over the next, you know, month and then now you’re sitting around with this book that has no traction behind it because you got distracted by the next shiny object. And that’s why we see the success from people that are doing business already. And they’re using it as kind of like a lead gen or a credibility piece on a specific topic. You know, in some cases, people are using these books to get booked on stages, right, or speaking events, things of that nature. So a lot of good to come from it. But it really comes down to knowing what the work, you do the work and I understand what you want the book to happen, right? Because if it’s like one of the speakers, john Rhodes was giving an example he’s helped write and publish hundreds of books, and know-how you’ve used books as you’re building a machine that’s building a machine, right? And then you’re building books that are these ongoing 24, seven salespeople for whatever you want it to be? How do you optimize that machine? How do you leverage that machine to grow your business and be smart about it, it might be literally one person that you want to sign as a client, like Jan gave an example he wrote, like, he went and did a wrote an entire book a physical, like, did the whole entire process start to finish for one company for one client and use like, literal like examples, inside of the book of like, the company names like talking with the CEO, like just doing a very personalized edition of this book, because he was aiming to get a pretty large contract, you know, taken care of, and you know, it’s like, okay, like, if this one book could turn into six figures in business, like, Is it worth your seven days of time to, like, get the hard workout? Like? Like, maybe? I don’t know.

Kim Doyal 36:56
Yeah, it depends on your goals. But well, the thing is, I was sitting, my brain is spinning from the content, the promotional perspective because the same thing happens with content. That’s great. So this podcast is not going to do either. it’s any good if it’s not promoted. Right? So yes, that you can push it but six months down the road, when the podcast has been out, am I gonna reset it? Am I going to keep it on a regular evergreen, you know, promotional schedule? And that’s where people kind of lose momentum, but with the book peace, you know, without getting into names and stuff. So I had a client a couple of years ago when I was doing, we were doing content marketing and email marketing for clients. And that’s what they did is they published books for people, but we’re talking, I think the packages started at, like, 25. Grand. Seriously. And so you look at that. And so, there’s twofold one is that when you’re I don’t know, to the level that they were that the client was necessarily hands off, you know, but when you’re in here doing this, you’ve invested all this time, I feel that there is a cost of the challenge that you guys run is minimal. But what you gain is I always tell people, Mike, don’t forget who you become in the process of this. And so who people who you become in the process of creating your own book, and you get so clear on your message, it kind of circles back to that point, that boy he took all that time was StoryBrand. And how much easier it is to generate quality input with Jarvis. So the same thing is with this book, where you guys are really giving and teaching. I mean, the challenge framework, right? And so I was sitting here thinking, Oh, my God, this would be great. You do the book, and then I could do a webinar to get the book and have an offer on the back end or, you know, whatever it is, but everything that you’re creating in order to get your book written, is also a framework for your, for the marketing of the book, is that safe to say?

Darby Rollins 38:50
Yeah, like, what was the type that the program that we’re running on the back end of this challenge is called big-ticket book machine. And it’s basically it’s just that it’s like, once you have the book, like, what else? Like how are you going to promote it? Like what are all the different moving parts? And like, like you just said, it’s, the book can be or the webinar can promote the book, the book can promote the webinar like you can repurpose the book itself for so many different things. Like, how do you set that system up, though, right? It doesn’t have to be very complicated. You just have to be really clear about what you’re selling after the book. Like if you’re selling a book to a free five-day challenge, or a paid, you know, challenge, or booking a call with you to set up an appointment with one of your sales team. Right? Like, what happens after someone makes a purchase into a book because what you’re doing with the book is you’re for one, you’re proving that you can follow through with something because like, again, like most people never write books in the first place. And even a large amount of people that start books like they never finished them in the first place. So just being able to like show someone a physical book And like, hand it to them and say I wrote this and I publish this. Like, they don’t need to know you use AI. I that’s not the point. The point is that like you have it and you did it. And you immediately are standing at a higher level on, like, not like the authority stage like Cartman would say it. But you know, you’re now a lot more. You just have the credibility that you’ve done, you put the time in and you’ve done it. And it’s a way to open up conversations, right? You know, how many how can you generate more meaningful, meaningful conversations that can bring more ideal people to work with you so that you can work together, grow the business, all that fun stuff. The book is The presale mechanism, right? If someone buys your book, and you’ve done the pre-selling on the front end, because your marketing message was so on point and you know, all the pain points that your customer avatar is dealing with, and you know, all the benefits that they’ll get if they understand what your book teaches. Then the right customers and clients like to buy your book, 5, 10, 20 bucks does price doesn’t really matter. Like the right ones will get segmented immediately because like, that’s why I like even just like a $5 price point. Like I just I don’t want to just have a bunch of freebies freebie people coming in just like downloading the book and then never like consuming it, I want to at least like open up the transaction so that it happens like I don’t really care to make money off of the book in the first place. But you know, if you want to just like from basic marketing funnel like if you want someone to like keep taking these actions like you need them to commit with their What better way to commit then pulling out your credit card and making a purchase with it. Right? I mean, that’s how I don’t know if I’m not to say that’s like marketing one on one, but it’s like, your it makes it much easier for someone to, you know, feel like they can trust you. At the next level. I guess at least you’re segmenting them at that point for whatever else you want to offer them.

Kim Doyal 41:54
Yeah, well, and I think that’s a key differentiator. I always, you know, to pull a wrestle run, somebody says, You know, I want people to vote with their credit cards. And you know, you get to a point I did the whole build a list of freebie seekers and gave everything away. And then you’re like, wow, that was a waste of five years. Oh, you know, I think that, to your point, the book is, is just opening a door to a relationship, and it’s what you do with it afterward. So you got me a little bit extra excited with the big-ticket book machine. So is that an offer when people have gone through the book challenge in terms of then taking the book and making it work for you?

Darby Rollins 42:32
Yeah, so it’s kind of a hybrid of like it kind of mastermind style, where we have the network and the connections just from Zachariah, my partner his experience, just in general, I mean, Zacharia ABS you know, you know, a powerhouse on this team because he, we haven’t touched on him but he manages a company called the book patch the book patch calm, and they’ve helped 60,000 plus authors over the last decade or so actually get published and, and publish their books. They printed millions of copies of books, using their warehouse out in Scottsdale, Arizona. But he’s seen a lot of books come through that he’s seen a lot of things that go that are common traits amongst best-selling books. And he’s seen things that are common traits amongst books that don’t do anything. And so taking that experience and we basically distill that down to like, like, okay, we can tell you what works and what doesn’t, from like, this is how you should like structure like the funnel and like the offer and stuff. And we can help you set it up, right like giving you like, proven templates. This is how you use the templates. This is where you put what and where. And because we’ve got Jarvis, we don’t need to charge people an arm and a leg for copywriting. Right? It’s like, here’s how you service to do it. Like if you want to go pay a copywriter 20 grand to build your funnel like do you, my guest? Like, if you like it, we do work with some people at that higher level as well. But not everyone, like it’s kind of that thing was like, not everyone needs everything, right. And there’s a lot of moving parts in the book publishing process. And so we want to, it’s the big-ticket Book Machine is like the extension of the challenge where Yes, the challenge is one bit because you need a book or at least a pre-sale page to start taking people to buy your book so that you can start to get them in your funnel, how do we get people to that point of seeing that result as quickly as possible. And so that’s what our number one focuses with that there and then that can lead to PR opportunities that can lead to, you know, booking you on podcasts to you know, working on like the content distribution side of things like developing that strategy over the next say like a 90-day window to like actually launch your book and have it see success. You know, it opens up a kind of like the world is your oyster. Let’s like get focused on what makes sense for you and your business and help you develop that. And we can connect you with all the best people to get all the stuff done that you don’t want to do with your team. And we can give it to you at a better rate because, like, we work with them directly.

Kim Doyal 45:11
Yeah, having those relationships and being able to make the introductions, knowing that there’s, you know, their experience and their success rates are huge. So this is the time this is very timely Darby, honestly, because I’m like, I’m just getting more excited, like, what can I cancel my calendar so I can make sure I brought in everything. So I’d love to hear if you can a little bit. So you talked about, you know, not a sales book, and what are some of the other by sharing yawns, but what are some other books? I mean, if you wouldn’t mind sharing if you can, just so people listening? know that a, they don’t have to be marketing books. Right. And, I mean, there’s probably a lot of marketers and business books in here. But I would just be curious to know some of the books that people have successfully, successfully published. Yeah, I guess.

Darby Rollins 46:01
Yeah. So I mean, that the goal of the challenges is to click publish, right at the end of the day, we want people to go through and click publish and get that milestone hit. And that’s where like to write a minimum viable book comes into play. But I’m just I’m kind of brainstorming right, now we get one of our previous challenge grads, Tobias. I think he’s based out of Germany. And so he was using Jarvis, and I think the program called Deep l to help with his translating. And so we wrote a book just published just a couple of weeks ago called to start your adventure today. You know, it’s a mental guide for how to change your life and start your own business. And, you know, because besides your own jobs in an easy way, and yeah, it’s this little step in the process there. We’ve had people come through and write ebooks, specific books on like, how to like a dog training as like a niche. And they were just like, I don’t even know this, this market or this niche, but I want to go and learn how to like, write an E-book to sell on Amazon, and make some daily sales, based on the keywords that I’m ranking for. Think of a few of the other ones that come through. I mean, Bible, he, he, he made his book, he was like a financial planner and a financial advisor. And so like, very specific to targeting people in his field, with who he can help. So it’s kind of business See, and I guess a lot of these like, stem in some form, in the nonfiction business side, because that’s the people that we tend to attract with this challenge. But, you know, Shane, he took this last challenge with us, and he’s getting really close to publishing, I think he’ll be done with his book. This week, or next maybe, is getting really close. But his book is called hustle without the grind, you know, helping, you know, a different take on, you know, avoiding burnout, you know, as entrepreneurs and like, still having that hustle. But having that kind of that Zen mentality inside of your business?

Kim Doyal 48:03
Kind of sounds up my alley, relative to what Yeah, yeah. No, that’s huge. I mean, you know, I kind of three on the spot there. But no, I just think for people listening, you know, I have a tendency just because I’m in the content, and marketing and online space that you forget, but a lot of people, you know, it’s interesting, even with like our Content Creators Planner, we really assumed we were going to be attracting digital marketers, who understood all the basics, and it’s like, oh, we’ve got chiropractors and photographers and dentists, and, you know, people in real estate and, and so it’s, I just love that this is not only you know, kind of that can be the front end of really driving sales and marketing your business. But the process of creating this book, to me like my brain is spinning with the content that can be pulled out. And I was thinking of us. I’m like, I think I want to take a book and use our content framework to specifically use the book piece of this. So I’m very excited. We can talk offline about that. But yeah, this is super exciting. How many challenges have you guys run now?

Darby Rollins 49:06
We started the first official one in February. And we started out doing a challenge every other week, which got pretty exhausting. Oh, my gosh, on Zachariah, and I’s front, and we were like, okay, but like, I learned best from doing things. And like, and just, I think a lot of people and say the same. And so we wanted the repetition. And we really, with how fast Jarvis continues to change and develop, you know, every week, it’s something new. Just like as we speak right now they’re wrapping up a launch where there are more new things that just got announced that we can use and teach people in the challenge. I think we’re at number six or seven. Going into this, and just the just July 12 challenge that’s coming up here. And right now we’re just kind of plotting it once a month. So you know, people can come in prep for it. You know, Really focus on that one week to, to focus in on that book. And then after that, you know, there’s obviously an opportunity to work with us if it makes sense. And if it for the right person, the right business. But yeah, I mean, just like what you’re saying about before about the type of books that we have seen throughout all of these challenges, I mean, it does range so dramatically for like, it’s not always people that are like, Oh, it’s like, they’re not necessarily even writing a book because they want to write a book, but they almost have to write a book, because they’re doctors, and they need a book. And yeah, and some of the people that come into the challenge are like, okay, I write I, like, I have, like, 50 clients that are doctors, and like, they need books, to like, bring to the conferences, they speak, to give people something. And so like, he came into the challenge to like, learn kind of how this process works. So he can apply it with his own team to help them write books with those doctors that they work with. So like another kind of application of it is like people, not even it doesn’t even need to be the business owner necessarily. That is coming through this challenge. Like, you know, people are buying tickets for this challenge and having their team come and do the content and understand how to use Jarvis and then interview the business owner and extract the content. They’re kind of like a ghostwriter would.

Kim Doyal 51:21
Oh, that’s pretty brilliant. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead.

Darby Rollins 51:28
Just because it’s such a no, it’s is it’s such a time commitment. Like regardless, like if you want to learn this process and go through and actually get it done like you or somebody else is going to do it. Right. And so you’re just at that point, it just, I guess it’s up to anyone to just determine what you know where their priorities need to be. But also under the you can leverage a lot of, like manpower in this process. Like, you don’t have to be your own editor. If you don’t want to, you don’t have to proofread your book, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to do a cover design. If you don’t want to hack, you don’t even have to write your own book if you don’t want. So you need to partner with someone who can help you write the book. And we’re finding people that are like, getting really good at writing books with Jarvis, like, as like a ghostwriter that I know that’s coming out of this. Not particular to me, but I mean, I have been approached with a few people asking if that’s something we do offer. And so, you know, maybe someday, but

Kim Doyal 52:26
I will, it reminds me just like the Jarvis community where people are like, Where do I find I need a directory of people who are great with this tool, and I can hire to write content. So I have no doubt that the same is coming out of this for people. So I have to I feel like I’ve kind of cheated Darby, like I’m like, 10 times more excited, not that I wasn’t to do the book. But now I’m like, just like listening to all this. I’m so giddy about doing this challenge. And also want to thank you, you were super patient. I know I reached out a few months ago, and, you know, moving countries is not an easy task. That’s I look at the beach, it’s well worth it. So So is it, it’s not too late, this is going to be published before the challenge begins. So people can join up to what like the date. I mean, if you guys have a cut-off, or when people can join the challenge, they can always join the following month. So it’s not like it’s going away.

Darby Rollins 53:23
Yeah, like, as I said, we recommend that everyone signs up a week in advance, like just to get, give yourself the buffer of time to consume and go through some of the content and plan out your week. If you do come in, like the day of July 12. You know, if your schedule is already clear, then you can absolutely still do it. But if you know, you’re, you’re already like limited on bandwidth, then it’s gonna be more difficult to like, go through the process and get the thing out. And so I think, but again, we’re doing another one in August, they’d still to be decided, but anyone that buys a ticket for right now and they can’t make this challenge. Like we’ve got people that are already queued up for August’s that the timing just didn’t make sense. But you know, they’re planning out a month ahead of time to make sure that they have the time to go through the content and, and dive in, which is just make sure that you’re being realistic with the amount of time that you can dedicate during the week to get this book out.

Kim Doyal 54:24
Well, I also have, I don’t know what it is about hashtags, but I have another hashtag I use and it’s everything is content. So I think I’m going to try and sort of write and go through this in public. So I’ll keep you posted on that. Like I’ll create content and email and somebody else up as I’m going through this because there’s just a lot of power I’m such a not about the behind the scenes stuff, and so really excited. So for everybody listening, you can go to writing with Jarvis calm, and if you don’t put the pressure on yourself for the July 12 like Darby was saying that you can get in there with would then essentially give you, you know, a month to get through this stuff, although I am sort of glad that I’m doing not a blitz, but you know, I’ve got a good 10 days maybe when at the time of this recording, so I’ll be able to get through it all. But this has been fantastic. I’m super glad we connected. Darby, thank you so much for being here. Is there anything else you want the listeners to know? Or is there anywhere else you’d like to send them outside of writing with Jarvis for writing, with Jarvis calm?

Darby Rollins 55:28
No, I mean, I just love anyone that that’s listening to us right now that if you have that book inside your head, and you know that, it’s just been sitting there, and you want to get it out, and you’re looking for, like, number one accountability to help kind of work with you along the way. And also a proven process that literally dozens of people have gone through over the last few months and actually click publish, hundreds of others have actually started this book writing process because of what Jarvis is like, you know, breaking the glass, the glass barrier, we’d love to have you join us, we’re continuing to add more and more, not just content, but like actual structure to the challenge every single month. And so when you buy access to your ticket, now, you’re gonna keep access to, you know, the challenge and the recordings and stuff. And of course, we’d love to work with you on an ongoing basis. But, you know, if, if at the very least is this challenge is still in its, I guess, month five right now of what we’re doing, and it’s going to be a consistent thing that we’re going to continue to build on and what we learned from it, running each challenge is going to go directly back into making the next one better. And, and so if you want to check out the challenge, like Kim said, riding with jarvis.com. But if you’d like to just check out what we’re kind of about. We have a community called Jarvis underground on Facebook that you can find through Jarvis underground calm, and that is a community of writers who are using Jarvis to write books to sell books to connect with other people who are on the same journey of learning how to use AI to write books. And we also have a book that we just released called publish with Jarvis that literally outlines this entire challenge framework gives you resources to take it on your own if now’s not the right time, you know, to take the live challenge with us. We want to make this as accessible as possible. So that, you know, my Zacharias goal is to help 10,000 new authors, you know, become published this year. And the way we can help people do that as get our book and our message into more hands and so really appreciate you having me on cam sharing this with your audience. And we’d love to see some of you guys on zoom with us on July 12.

Kim Doyal 57:55
Absolutely, pleasure is all mine and I’m super excited to be a part of it. So everybody, thanks for listening, and all of the links if you didn’t catch them will be in the show notes so you can catch those on the post as well. Have a fantastic time. Hope to see you in the challenge and we will catch you next time.

Links from this episode

Writing With Jarvis – 7-Day Book Challenge

Published with Jarvis Book

SideHustle Card game